


From the Cold

by SouthernRust



Category: Underworld (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Post-Blood Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-25
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-11-04 20:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10998195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernRust/pseuds/SouthernRust
Summary: After a year and change of searching, he's found her at last.





	From the Cold

**Author's Note:**

> ten years have passed between Awakening and Blood Wars.

“It’s time to come home.”

He bids her return with him, all but begs with his eyes and the unspoken devotion that’s not yet passed with the years. Eve agrees, though there are stipulations each brings to the table.

She asks for a private homecoming. Nothing grandiose or formal: something more personal ( intimate, she says; David chooses not to fixate upon the word ) than introductions and toasts from a hundred strangers who will undoubtedly begin with hate, or indifference. He tells her of course, and promises it will only be himself: a party of one and however warm a welcome he can provide.

He makes the request that she visit her mother beforehand. This year and change has been difficult on Selene, for a number of reasons, he says — and though not a day passes that she does not yet mourn Michael, David confesses softly that greater still is her sorrow for a lost daughter. Contrition alone is no apology, he knows, but in order for Selene to demonstrate that she is capable of humility and making right, she must be given the chance. Eve agrees to keep a soft heart where she knows her mother finds difficulty, and he gives her directions, with coordinates and all; Eve tucks this away for safe-keeping, rightly eager for adventure, and for illuminated skies she’s only so far dreamt of. 

She asks for free reign of the property and the grounds and those boundaries far-reaching outside. David takes no thought on the matter, grants her the same right she possesses as an equal, and not as his subject. His position into power has not changed the levels on which they stand.

He makes her promise to call when she’s on her way. It is not a leash, not a curfew or a check-in, though there is something to be said about the tightness in his chest— the way it dissipates when she readily agrees, and slips her number into his mobile ( hiding behind her hair all the while ).

And when they part ways, he draws her into a hug he’s been denying himself: with one arm draped sure and strong around her shoulders. He holds her there a minute, two, breathes in until his lungs expand with the heat of her. He lets go, and smiles fully at her as he slides behind the wheel of a sleek, black Porsche, and says,

“See you soon.”

\---

David sends for a plane destined for Germany not long after, that he might gather a portion of Eve’s belongings from the monastery: novels bookmarked and left awaiting her return, an equal number of practical and decorative trinkets gathered throughout the years, a weapon or two she’d forged under her father’s guidance— and later independently, as she only ever was.

He thumbs through a book or two in between the hours and refrains from entertaining image of Lucian’s raised brow, the way his expression had questioned the justification behind the unexpected visit. Wasn’t it news enough that he’d found her, and bid her return? David insists it to be so—and he pushes aside his mind’s own hiss at the intrusion upon her personal space each time he reenters Eve’s room: it is still wholly hers, but the scent of Eve has gone, the warmth of her, the promise that she might at any time stride through the door for respite, for self-prescribed isolation, for satisfying creative wiles. It is hers, but it’s empty, and he’d not wish her feel any less a stranger in a new home than she will inevitably be.

Her clothes are to remain almost entirely where they are, though it’s with a hasty hand and subdued thoughts that David stuffs her personal effects into a duffel bag and folds a couple of outfits from the closet neatly across the top. Later he’ll shake his head at his own audacity, uncertain which is worse: that he’d had the nerve to empty her sock drawer by the handful, or that he’d stood before her closet and sifted between hangers, that he’d convinced himself that she’d like these choices ( that they looked comfortable; stylish; unassuming ).

He remembers the modest jewelry collection kept neatly in a velvet-lined box and calls for that too; there will be, after all, more than enough occasions to wear them.

( David wonders in passing what became of the single piece he’d gifted her years ago. He chooses, for self-preservation’s sake, not to linger for too long on indulging curiosity. )

He considers her photography collection as a spectator might recall to memory another’s life, stands before the mural’s curious disorder and the way Eve said to have added to it: sometimes in entire clusters and at other times in single pieces—though she never ran out of inspiration, or wall, to fit her. To this, David ultimately decides against.

As a compromise, David on his last evening borrows Lucian’s computer to download a picture he’d once taken on his own, inspired by Eve’s incessant snapping. He recalls neither where nor how long ago he’d taken it—simply that he’d hiked alone to a nearby mountain face on an evening that had tried his patience to the nerve. There he stood atop a jutted ledge overlooking the forest, the monastery, the ravine on the far side, and when the moon was high, and the fog so thick you thought you might leap within it, David had taken the shot, climbed down, and returned with no one the wiser.

He prints this, and after scrawling her name across the back, tucks the photo within a book. David thinks no further on the matter.

Before he leaves for the final time, David sweeps his gaze across every surface: not so bare as to be unrecognizable, but comfortably shifted, comfortably known: there is a change, and one to be looked forward to.

And then the splash of red spots his eye beyond a half-closed door — David retrieves the scarf, though in truth he possesses half a mind to toss it into the closet. He folds the cloth neatly against his forearm, tucks it within the lighter of the two bags draped across his shoulders, and shuts the door behind him.

When David returns to the Coven, he sets her belongings upon the foot of the bed made up expectantly for Eve’s arrival — hers entirely, but not yet made her own.

A part of him quietly rejoices in the idea that he shouldn’t have to know what that means ( what her own, private space will look like ). He’ll afford her the privacy she’d always been given; it is hers, and Eve needn’t even ask.

\---

She calls him a couple weeks later, with a little less than an hour until midday.

He’s outside long before the vehicle’s tires crunch across the gravel roundabout, and there he waits: body shielded within the shade of the garage, eyes flickering behind a pair of sunglasses. He bides his time with both hands stuffed within his pockets, or tucked beneath his crossed arms — this alleviates some of the urge to incessantly glance at his wrist. Not by much.

And then she’s there. In the city, on the grounds. She exits the car to meet him as he crosses the yard, and in the afternoon glare, he swears Eve’s hair looks three shades lighter, softer. The sun looks as though it’s gone and warmed what the moon works so delicately to cool: her skin bare at the shoulders, the sliver of belly, the slope of her thighs —

“David.” She smiles up at him, an expression that is all Eve: all instinct, all teeth, all heart.

He pulls her into a hug at the waist. Both arms this time, a proper embrace, and he wonders at the spectacular heat of her, and how it rivals even the sun.

“Welcome home. Eve.”

**Author's Note:**

> Includes canon divergent headcanons and roleplay plots developed on tumblr.  
> You may find these works at the xprodigium and valouriism urls.  
> My co-collaborator can be found at the xprogenitor and hybridiism urls.


End file.
